


The Courtesan Experiment

by kittydesade



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-13
Updated: 2012-01-13
Packaged: 2017-10-29 10:53:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/319106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don't be alarmed. It has to do with sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Courtesan Experiment

**Author's Note:**

> _"Have you ever had anyone?"_   
> _"... sorry?"_   
> _"And when I say 'had' I'm being indelicate."_   
> _"I don't understand."_   
> _"Well, I'll be delicate then. Let's have dinner."_

"Does Mycroft know you're here?"

"Of course not. If Mycroft knew I was here he'd have an apopleptic fit out of shock. He'd tell mother."

Two freshly-legal schoolboys standing in front of Madame de Pougy's tea house was not an uncommon incident. Neither was the hesitation, the confusion and curiosity with which they stared at the building, one and the other. The taller boy's clinical appraisal of the building. That was less than usual.

The taller boy cleared his throat. "Are you coming in?"

"What, me?" his friend's voice cracked, though he tried to cover it up. "Ah, I think I should, um..."

"Suit yourself," he didn't wait for the other boy to come up with some sort of excuse, he had already run through all the plausible ones. The doorbell wasn't audible from the outside. He wondered if it was a doorbell at all or a discreet light on someone's secretarial desk.

A moment later the door opened and a woman looked out, one of those women made up to be that nebulous age between thirty and fifty although the boy was briefly distracted with frowning at her and attempting to determine which it was. "Yes?" She looked him up and down, waiting for him to explain himself.

"I've come to engage the services of one of your young ladies." As though eighteen year old boys came to the door of Madam de Pougy's every day.

"Did you have someone in mind?" Although her expression doubted that he had enough experience with women in that regard to have anyone in mind.

"I was hoping someone here could advise me. I need a young woman with experience and intelligence."

"That doesn't narrow it down very much, I'm afraid. Well, come in, and we'll see if you find anyone you like."

The inside of the building was about what he expected for a row house turned office. The parlor had become a secretary's hide-a-hole, desks and file cabinets and, yes, a small phone contraption with a light next to it so that whoever was manning the desk at the time could see there was a client at the door. Beyond that there was a kitchen that seemed to be off limits, and on the other side was the parlor. Several young women there, ranging in age from a little older than him to in their mid to late thirties, he judged. All of them in conversation with each other, and the conversation stopped when he entered the room, only to pick up a moment later as they looked him over and made their decisions.

The boy frowned. His first step into the room was hesitant, still piecing together why they were evaluating him, not that they had no choice in the matter. But weren't they the ones selling something, here? His next step was more sure, they were determining whether or not it was likely to be a suitable client-provider match. Selling services was not, after all, like selling items. There was a relationship involved, and there had to be some sort of mutual understanding or agreeability for that to be a satisfactory arrangement among everyone.

There were cups of tea, of course, as befit a tea house. And presumably the tea tags dangling off the edge of every lady's cup was representative of the lady, and you made your selection based on that.

Jasmine and Cinnamon were conversing brightly in a corner, but Jasmine was too old and Cinnamon too animated; he didn't need to be effused at, ever. Lady Gray held court in one corner of a couch, with a younger woman whose tea tag he couldn't identify sitting opposite her and another fidgeting to one side. No fidgeters. Surely every aspect of the women here must appeal to someone, but he didn't see anyone whose company he would be able to tolerate for a couple of hours in the intimacy required, let alone for the expected breadth and depth of the investigation. Shaking his head, he turned to go.

"That was quick."

The first woman to speak directly to him. Her cup and saucer matched the others; her tag was green and yellow and he glanced at it upside down, but surely they didn't identify each other by their tea names. "I know what I want," he told her, and she smiled and spoke before he could turn to go.

"That's a rare quality; not many who come here _know_ what they want."

For a brothel, that didn't seem quite right. "I beg your pardon?"

She shrugged, straightening and turning to fully engage him in the conversation, shutting the rest of the room out by the set of her shoulders, dark hair brushing over bare skin. No doubt the cut was designed for such maneuvers. "Oh, they assume they know what they want based on momentary gratification, but they don't stop to think about their tastes and desires in depth. It's all right when they're only looking to try something different, perhaps exotic, but if you routinely engage the services of a professional I'd expect you'd do well to listen to the professional in her field of expertise, wouldn't you?"

She didn't drop eye contact through the whole speech, except once, to glance around the room and include her lady friends in the category of professionals. She also didn't step forward, only presented her opinion for his judgment with candor and without shame. The sort of confidence that came from a well-funded and well looked-after education, from parents with too much money and not enough attention on their child, allowing her to explore the world as she pleased with only the usual admonitions about safety and personal responsibility. So of course she became a prostitute.

"And are you an expert in your field?" he challenged, coolly.

Not that it seemed to bother her. She smiled. "Not in the way of being experienced, but I like to think I have an aptitude for knowing what a client wants." He revised her age downward, which did raise his eyebrows a bit.

"And what do I want?"

She considered that for a moment in silence, one finger tapping lightly at the side of her teacup. "You want to be challenged. You've no patience for people who don't come up against you, who aren't equal to you. You dislike being bored and you constantly seek stimulation, judging by the way you looked around the room, that stimulation isn't often physical. Unless you're one of those ..." Her eyes narrowed. "No, you're not, are you. You live entirely inside your head, the rest is just..." the hand not holding the teacup gestured, dismissing it all. "Wrapping paper. Which makes me wonder, why are you here?"

It took him a moment to put words to his mouth that he judged wouldn't embarrass him, a fact which embarrassed him in and of itself, or at least it bothered him. "To consult an expert," he rapped out, quick and certain. "I seem to have found one."

"Did you need a lengthy consultation? The study of tea can be quite... extensive."

"We're back to the euphemism?" No point in hiding what this place was, after all. If he'd hoped it would disquiet her, though, he was disappointed. "Yes, I suspect I might."

"Euphemisms are, sadly, required in this day and age. Let me go consult my appointment book, I'll see what I can do."

  


  


  


They took a cab to her place, a spacious flat near a park that was neither suspiciously posh in location and decor nor did it conceal poverty. The sort of place a young professional would have lived in, except in this case it was a large, open layout sort of a room, with an expansive bed laid on with rich-toned sheets. Everything clean and neat, he suspected she had someone in to tidy every so often.

"Is it everything you expected?"

She was pouring water into shaped glasses for them, came around the corner of the kitchen and handed him a glass. "I suppose," he remarked, to cover the fact that he'd had no idea what to expect.

If she noticed, she didn't comment. Smiled, instead, and held out her hand. "My name is Ginger. Price, if you want to know. Yes, that is actually my real name," she added, at his skeptical eyebrow. "My mother was a fan of the classics."

"Rogers," he realized out loud. She nodded.

"And you are?"

Politeness and the rituals of civility were known to him, this was familiar ground. "Sherlock Holmes," he told her, and they shook hands.

And now he was out of the usual rote conversation pieces and expected things to do, but Ginger, it seemed, was not. "Come, please. Sit." She gestured to the sofa, took the seat on the opposite side. "You wanted to consult an expert on prostitution in particular, or sex in general?"

"Sex in general," he told her, surprised and quietly relieved in a small part of the back of his mind that she didn't immediately set about attending to that part of things.

"As I understand it, young men your age tend to do their consulting with their peers."

He didn't bother hiding his snort of derision at that idea. He did, at least, have the grace not to comment on his lack of peers, but that left him without anything to say.

Ginger shook her head. "There's no harm in trying out a friend or school companion," she started, but his fingers curled and tensed on the arm of the sofa and his eyes widened and she saw it. By the way her eyes flickered now and again she paid attention to even those small signs; he wondered if everyone in her cadre of prostitutes did or if it was just her. "So, no one you feel friendly enough with to do so. Or you didn't want to take the chance, or both..."

He leaned back against the corner of the sofa, gestured for her to go on. This was, at least, interesting.

She smiled, which was also interesting, not the usual response. "All right, then. You're well groomed and dressed but not overly so, there's none of the usual digging or pink from scrubbing too much, which I would say means you're a fastidious person by nature. Picky about your details. But your clothes aren't ironed, they look more as though someone does your laundry and hangs it for you and you take less attention to the proper care of them than someone fastidious about all aspects of his life would."

He barely opened his mouth to say anything but that she noted it. "I'm a study in contradictions, it seems."

"Adding to that the fact that you're a man of little passion but you consult a prostitute for sex. You're not ..." Her eyes tracked back and forth over his face for a second. "Aroused in the slightest."

"But you think I should be."

"I think it's my job to discern what would make you so. It's a little early to tell, yet."

He crossed one leg over the other, let his arm drape over crossways as well. "You're the expert, shouldn't you know?"

"Are you in a hurry? But you are ... or rather, I am getting close to the truth, you've closed off your body to me. Young men cover themselves when they're naked and ashamed of being so, you close your body off when you've been found out."

He moved his arm back to his side again, on purpose, but it felt strange to have it there. "Is that what you think I did."

"By the tension around your face, that's what I know you did. There's no point in continuing this further if you won't relax."

Sherlock started to argue with her, then closed his mouth. She was, as they had covered several times over, the expert in these matters. He'd come to consult her and either she was an expert in her field and therefore to be trusted, or she wasn't. It didn't make him feel too much better, only more certain that this was the proper way to go about things.

And while he thought that over she had closed in on him, curling her fingers around his and lifting his hands to hold them in the space between their bodies. But that was as far as she went.

"There's only so much room in the human body for sentiment, emotions, and visceral responses. Tension..." she amended after a moment. "Most kinds of tension make it difficult to allow the body to feel desire. I suspect you know this as an abstract even though you don't know how it applies to you."

"I'm aware, yes."

"Good. Then try to forget why you're here in the first place and concentrate on this moment, now."

Eyebrows arching, his lips pressed together before he found words. "And why should I do that?"

"Because you're bracing yourself against an event you don't even know will come at all. Or what it will be like when you do. You've built up this idea of what will happen in your mind and closed your mind off to everything I have to offer, already. You don't know what I'm going to do, Sherlock," she smiled when she said it, kindly, but with rebuke. Her thumbs brushed over his knuckles. "So stop pretending that you do. If it amuses you, you can _try_ and predict from what you know of me."

He frowned, tilting his head at her, about to say something.

"In fact, please do."

"And what should I say? That you were born to privilege and middling wealth, given a good education but little attention from either of your parents, at least one of whom was away at all times? You were taken to all of the usual lessons, you may even have enjoyed them, you certainly took them to heart. You have the callus of a writer, someone who uses a pen often, but you have the toes..." she'd kicked off her shoes earlier. "Of a dancer, pressed and atrophied by your shoes."

Her smile widened. It made him blink for a second. "And what else?"

"You play the piano. Because it's expected, you don't like it very much. But you do it well because you do everything well, it's a point of pride with you." His eyes fixed on hers, watched her face smooth out a little as he hit a couple of marks. "You don't showcase any of your talents before you're at least competent in your level of skill. Your pride won't let you."

"And what else?" The smile hadn't left with that. He didn't know what else he could throw at her, but he could extrapolate from the facts in evidence.

"You were at the top of your class. Brilliant but lazy, I believe is what they call you. You coasted your way through your classes but it never touched you because it all fit together so neatly, so perfect, you knew all the answers to their questions. Everyone came to you for help eventually, because they couldn't make sense of it and you didn't understand when it was all so simple. Eventually you got bored, you made your parents miserable by telling them you ..." Now he faltered. She was too close. "... you wanted to work as a..."

"A tea girl."

He swallowed. "Yes."

Her lips touched his. He couldn't quite call it a kiss because there was none of the usual pushing and slobbering he associated with kisses, it wasn't that unpleasant. It felt a bit like a reward for a good answer, and the world grayed at the edges and then the pressure of her lips was gone from his and she sat back, still holding his hands.

"See? Now you're much more relaxed."

He blinked, frowned at her, but she was right. He was. "And now you'll begin?"

"We already have."

  


  


  


It took her another hour to even take off his shirt. After the kiss they talked, or rather she lectured and he listened, more fascinated than he thought he would be at first. Desire, she told him, begins in the mind, first and foremost and always. It might be the intellectual mind or the instinctive mind, the lizard brain, but always in the perceptions and reception of what is presented.

"And what does that say about me?" he almost smiled.

"You live entirely in your mind. It means I have to go there to meet you."

Back and forth. They went back and forth and he knew she let him get a couple strikes on her, pointing out things to which she winced, even visibly at one point, but she didn't retaliate in kind. The longer it went on the more he believed she was capable of it.

She made it into a game. Perceiving each other, sparring. Reading the pupil dilations and the responses of skin puckering into chilled flesh, blood rushing to capillaries, the jump in a pulse. The small stutters of breath. She pointed out all the signs of desire as they emerged, slowly, which made him all the more conscious of his body, which didn't, somehow, disturb him. Possibly because she did nothing but lean in closer and closer, more confrontational than sexual. He could cope with that.

When they reached the point where he stripped off her clothes she did give him some instruction, mostly to point out that it was a delicate operation and should not be handled like chopping a carcass at a butcher's. She _explained_ things, everything, everywhere she touched and why, and why she chose that particular manner of touch. It seemed that when he told her he wanted to consult her expertise she took him far more literally than most people would have. There was a period of three or four minutes when there was no talking at all.

"Did that bring you the understanding you wanted?" she asked, looking up at him with her chin resting on his hip. He saw her laughing at him, as well as seeing that she did not mean it unkindly. It was the same sort of delight he experienced upon solving a problem that had been nagging at him.

He gave it some consideration, since she hadn't yet taken back her preference for honest answers. "I'm not sure."

"Hmm." And she crawled up and stretched out next to him on the bed.

He flopped onto his side, head propped on one hand, and looked at her. "Is there some particular way it should be done? Some delineation..." Her nose wrinkled in distaste before he finished that sentence. "I'll take that as a no."

"The only particular way it should be done is whatever way brings pleasure to all participants. And there is no delineation between where the state of virginity ends and the state of sexually experienced begins. Not that's consistent between one person and the next, at least, that I've found. You hadn't done a thing, and now you have. Now you have that experience to draw upon for your consideration."

"Hmm." He flopped onto his back again and thought about that, watching the ceiling.

She shifted, stretched her other leg out a little and watched him, settling back on the bed. It seemed she was content to wait patiently until he decided what to do next, which was both comforting and disconcerting.

He did admit if only in his own head that the whole experience hadn't been as unpleasant as he had expected. In point of very grudging fact it hadn't been unpleasant at all, although not something he felt a desire to seek out on his own. Since it was something that people did and often made a great deal of fuss over, he assumed he might as well look into it.

"What sorts of people make use of your services?" he asked, back onto his side and catching her by surprise.

She rolled over again and looked at him. "What sorts... well, all sorts, I suppose. Old or younger, usually younger in my specific case, although for the tea house..."

"No, I mean, what are people usually looking for."

"Ahhh..." This time when she rolled onto her back the movement brought her body closer in line with his, and he wasn't sure it was accidental. She brought her nearer arm over her stomach, though, fingertip moving back and forth along the midline of her abdomen rather than touching him. "It amounts to the same thing, but in different forms; usually they crave attention. Companionship. They believe they're lacking sex but the sex act doesn't bring them pleasure so much as being with someone who cares enough to seek out what they enjoy and give it to them." She looked over at him. "The physical reactions are secondary when you pay the rates of someone like me, what you're paying for at this point is skill."

It made sense. He hadn't thought of it in quite that way before. "The ability to read people in their responses and make a deduction as to what they have, what they're missing..."

"And what they want, exactly."

He found himself answering her smile with a wry one of his own. "Do they know what they want?" He didn't. Or rather, he hadn't been sure.

"Not in words. But as I said, I like to think I have an aptitude for discovering that."

He nodded, slow and careful. "I can't say anything to the contrary." She took it with both text and subtext and chuckled, and then he frowned. "Most people, you said most people."

"You came looking for experience. You don't seem to be most people."

Sherlock let that go without comment, as it stood well enough on its own. Her usual approaches weren't what was required, if he even knew what that was as far as people who weren't him. He would have said her usual approaches weren't working except that whatever she had decided on was working. He thought. For a certain standard of working. All the appropriate physical responses were there and he didn't feel upset or as though he'd done something distasteful. And once it was over he didn't feel a need to repeat the experience, either. Information, data, he had sought experience and now he had it. He didn't see what all the fuss was about, or why he should join in.

"You're in your head again."

Her voice came from far away; her hand was on his shoulder. Not his hip or his chest or any other exposed part of him that she could have touched, but his shoulder. A gesture that could be chaste if they weren't both completely nude. And might still be chaste.

"I thought you said I lived in my head," he pointed out.

"Some times more than others."

It wasn't unpleasant. Her touch, back and forth, for the intimacy of contact, he realized, with a burst of clarity that widened his eyes and caught her answering smile. He understood, she saw that understanding, and there was no need to say more about it. Unless he had a question, which he did. "Is it always like that? Is it _supposed_ to be like that?" he added, being aware that very few things were as ideal in practice as they were in theory.

"Ideally," she echoed his thoughts eerily well. "Yes. Particularly in the beginning, when the discoveries are cascading one after the other, but, yes. A connection between two people, I've always felt, at least," she added. "Different people have different and sometimes conflicting ideas about the whole thing. But I've always felt that two people who engage in such activities should at least be comfortable being intimate with each other. In whatever form that intimacy takes."

"You don't believe this is the most intimate of acts?"

"I believe..." she drew her fingers down the length of his arm, drawing his attention as well. He watched her till her fingertips reached the back of his hand and she laced her fingers through his, pressed her palm against his. And he didn't mind. Somehow. Perhaps because she spoke as she touched, and it started to run together. "I believe that intimacy comes as a confluence of actions. The spoken word, the right touch. Knowing someone well enough to know what they like is the intimacy, the rest of it is just the manifestation of it. Knowing whether or not someone likes to be touched at all."

His palm felt the cold air when she withdrew her hand. His brow creased. Not because it didn't make sense but because it did. "But this act..."

"People put a great deal of importance on it. We're taught to from the moment we're taught it exists. Mum and Dad do something secret and special together. Men and women together, eventually we learn that men and men, or women and women might do it as well. Whatever we might decide for ourselves, it often begins with believing this is the most intimate of acts. That we should only allow ourselves that freedom with someone we trust, with someone we hold a particular feeling for."

"You don't reserve yourself for that, for your particular someone or a particular feeling."

"I have a skill, as I told you. I don't believe that skill has anything to do with that feeling. If I wish to be intimate with someone, I will tell them more of what I like than simply... this."

His eyes narrowed. "What _do_ you like?" Underneath that, the question of what she liked, was it representative of her sex. She knew. She understood, she had followed him this far, he didn't expect she would fail to understand him now.

" _I_ like a number of things. Like you," she smiled wider, eyes bright. "I like a challenge."

  


  


  


It was easier when he didn't have to be involved. Or rather, when he wasn't expected to participate. Again, she talked him through it, and it wasn't unpleasant. Different, at least. He noted and recorded all the many, many new data for future reference, and several things he hadn't quite had the context for were made clearer. Not that he hadn't known what was going on, but it made a certain amount more sense.

The silence lasted somewhat longer. He was thinking, and she was composing herself, and after a bit she got off the bed and went into the kitchen. Somewhat to his surprise, because she did still seem to totter on her legs.

He frowned when she came back with water. "You'll want it," she explained. "Or I will, at least. As with many other forms of exercise, and in particular for women, it's dehydrating."

"Ah," he nodded, and drank. And now that she pointed it out he did feel somewhat dehydrated, and better for the drink.

She went back to the kitchen, this time for a pitcher of water which she placed on the bedside table on a small doily he realized must now be there specifically for that purpose. It was the little things, he decided, that hadn't been relevant until now so he didn't think about them. He didn't suppose it would become relevant after this, but at least he had the information and could decide whether to retain or discard it.

"I suppose I should extend the range of my experiments," he murmured, thinking out loud. She glanced over at him and he shook his head. "Oh, not here, not now. But as a matter of investigation..."

"As to where your inclinations lie?" He nodded; she appeared to give it some thought. "As a first-encounter guess I would say your inclinations don't tend towards this sort of activity at all. Though I could be wrong," she admitted.

"What makes you say that?"

"As much preliminary as there's been simply to get your attention? This doesn't excite you. You don't find it exciting when I touch you, you find it intrusive, unless I'm catching your attention in some other way."

"The so-called blush response," he remembered. "Pupil diliation, increase of blood flow..."

"Exactly. You show none of the classic signs for any of the usual triggers, until I engage you on an intellectual level, until I give you some sort of challenge. I _would_ imagine it's entirely possible for you to have one or more encounters with another person this way, rather than paying for the services of a professional..." And she didn't even sound in the slightest bit either unaware or ashamed of it. "But it would take a great deal of effort to meet you on that sort of level. You'd be an exhausting lover, I'm afraid."

"Not, I suppose, in the way that one would like."

That would have been a flirtatious smirk she gave, if they hadn't been doing things beyond flirting already. He chuckled, laid back again. "No, not in the way that most people would like," she agreed, watching him, still smiling.

"And yet, it's expected..."

She rolled her head to look at him, eyebrows arched, the humor gone from her face. "I didn't think you were the sort to listen to other people's expectations of you."

"I'm not." He propped up again on his elbows. "Why would I be? I don't give a damn what others expect of me."

"And yet, here you are."

Her expression shuttered off to him; he didn't know what she was playing at, but he wasn't sure he liked it. "I don't like being subject to the ideas of what other people think I am, what they think I should be, I don't like... not knowing." The words weren't quite there, he didn't have the vocabulary to explain himself properly, and that irritated him as well.

And then she nodded. "You want to make this choice for yourself rather than have everyone make it for you every time they look at you. Every time they make a decision about you. But if you do this and know for yourself, you know the truth and what they decide about you doesn't matter."

His frown slid from irritable to thoughtful, brows wrinkling up instead of down, mouth crunching into a little squiggle. "I know. Do I know, what do I know?" Not a question, more of a thinking out loud, and she didn't answer, letting him think. Which was appreciated, if in that mild and distant way with which he interacted with most of the world. "I know that my thoughts and reactions are, if the expressions of others is to be trusted, not the average for other boys of my age but then I knew that anyway. I knew that when I came here. I know that, no, I have confirmation that it isn't a neurological difficulty ..." She was touching him again. Her hand lay, open and light, on his chest. "Yes?"

"You're overthinking it," she told him, amused.

"Isn't the usual problem that people underthink?"

"Yes, but you're trying to define yourself as a problem that requires a solution when the problem is nothing more complicated than the absence of information."

"That information being..." And then he realized what she was getting at. "... what we've been exploring here today."

She chuckled. The tip of her nose was an inch or two from his; she kept moving and he didn't quite catch the implication of the fact until she did something more blatant. Observation, he needed to keep his attention on his observations. That proved difficult when she presented him with one problem with her words and another with her body. "Exactly. You did say you wanted to consult an expert."

"And I certainly found one."

"I'm glad you think so."

  


  


  


She left him in the bed to think on it, after that was done as well. He didn't feel terribly different nor did he feel inclined to repeat the exercise, but as with the other two acts, it hadn't been unpleasant. In fact, he'd rather enjoyed it.

So why did he feel no need or inclination or urge to repeat? Did that mean there was something wrong with him? Was there anything wrong at all? The sounds of her clearing up the cushions on the sofa and refilling the pitcher before replacing it on the stand, checking the thermostat and a few other things that surely couldn't have needed doing right at this very moment. Leaving him to his thoughts, he realized. She'd said he lived in his head so often. But she didn't bother to put clothes on, and then again, why should she? Should he put clothes on? What was the protocol in these moments, to leave? He'd given his payment information when he'd made the booking, he could just pack it up and go.

No, he sat up against the pillows and waited for her to come back to bed. He still had questions. She came back soon enough and burrowed under the covers when she saw his eyes focus on her. "Mmm?"

"Is there something wrong with this?"

Her eyebrows shot up. "I should hope not, I thought ..."

"No, I mean," he made a face, gestured at himself; he didn't have to clarify before she snorted.

"You're listening to the expectations of others again. There is no ..." she sighed. "The human body is a complex thing. All those tiny little parts, muscles and blood and bone, hormones and neurons and neural pathways in the brain and sensory input, all of it working together. And with all of that there are so many ways for things to, to be different. You function perfectly well enough."

The corner of his mouth twitched up a bit. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." Her eyes widened, playful, brows lifting and falling in what would have been a lecherous wiggle if she'd kept it up more than that one motion. "And that's exactly the point. You are healthy, functional, and as far as I can tell, perfectly normal. For you. And that's all anyone can expect."

"To be normal," he echoed. "For them."

"Exactly. You have a baseline setting, now, the same as you have a baseline for your body temperature or a baseline measurement of blood pressure, resting pulse. Just because yours is different from the average doesn't make it abnormal or wrong."

Well, he couldn't much argue with that. "In your experience as a professional in the sex industry."

"Mm-hmm."

"Hnh." Perhaps he should have paid more attention in class, but he couldn't remember that they had discussed this as a possible variant on sexual behaviors and desires. Then again, they had barely touched on bisexuality as a possible variant, and he knew for a second-hand fact that some form of interest in the opposite or same sex resided in most of the people he knew. Knew it even more, now that he had some greater idea of the signs of sexual desire in a person.

She'd burrowed into the blankets while he thought, but she didn't seem inclined to touch him again. Any more than he invited it. From the pictures and cards plastered on phone booths and films and stories from other boys at school he somehow imagined a greater amount of gyration and writhing and slobbering all over him, or he had. Up until that one kiss.

"You really do consider it part of your profession to anticipate the needs and wants of your clients."

"Well. If I didn't, I wouldn't make a very good provider of pleasure, would I?"

He had to chuckle. "And is this typical of the women in your profession?"

"And men. But no, it isn't," she sighed. "It's sort of an acquired skill, and not by everyone. The people who realize that whether or not we get paid hinges on whether or not we're pleasing act accordingly, those who don't, well." Small shrug, pressing her head further into the pillows for a moment. "They don't get much repeat business."

He looked up and down the length of her body. She'd abandoned artifice and posturing a long time ago, but now her shoulders slumped and her body more relaxed than before, her eyes heavy-lidded. On the verge of falling asleep. Possibly he should let her. He still had more questions.

"What if I wanted to give you some repeat business?"

She pushed herself to sit up, to pay more attention, to give that comment the incredulous stare it deserved. "You? Repeat this experiment? In, what, the interests of eliminating outside contamination?"

He spread his hands. "Isn't it possible there might be some mistake?"

"I'm quite sure I'm not mistaken about you."

The smile was a bit twisty, but real. "And you're the expert."

"I would know."

"I think I'd like to test that theory," he leaned in, elbow into the pillow next to her head, getting in her space, this time. Not that he expected it would work on her the way it did on others, but he did notice the signals she'd pointed out earlier, which was gratifying. Pupil dilation. Patterns of breath. It was like a game. Control your reactions, read the signs. Respond accordingly. He didn't think it would be fun for very long, but for tonight it was more than interesting enough.

She showered and wrapped herself in a house robe in the morning, after they'd had a little sleep and a good deal more water; she was right about the dehydrating effects. He wouldn't say he felt different, stretching and moving to shower as well after a little while. But he did feel somewhat more the wiser or perhaps more experienced for the consultation. Certain questions put to bed, and learning a whole new set of evidence for his data banks. "Thank you," he blurted out, for lack of anything more accurate to say as he stood at the doorway of her flat. "You've been most helpful."

"Glad to be of service." In that not quite laughing way she had of speaking.

"And if I should require your services again?"

One shoulder shrugged, one hand twisted in a vague gesture that allowed the imposition of chance into her predictions, but. "You won't."

"No..." he closed the door behind him, hands in his pockets and off to the lobby to catch a cab. No, he probably wouldn't.

  


  


  


The man wasn't quite so young anymore, and she was head of her own tea house by now. And they even sat and had cups of tea, over conversation, while she teased the tangles out of his mind over his latest case. He didn't consult her often; hadn't, in fact, made use of her services since their first year of meetings. But sometimes he went for the conversation and her view of things after the fact, her input. Such as now, when it became necessary for him to ask the advice of an expert.

He broke off in mid sentence to set the tea cup back in its saucer with jarring force and asked, somewhat irritably. "And why does everyone think I'm a virgin, anyway?"

His temper wasn't improved by the fact that that caused her to slide down a bit in her chair from laughing. "I have no idea, Sherlock, I really don't. I could disabuse them of the notion, if you like."

"Ah, no thank you," he shook his head. "I think Miss Adler knows me quite well enough already."

"Intimately?" she purred at him, raising her eyebrows and concealing her smile with her cup. Which he heard in her voice anyway, and she knew he knew. It was a very knowledgeable room.

He gave the question some consideration before shaking his head. "Not so much as she thought. As it turned out."


End file.
